Never Tell

by Seeber, Claire

  ‘Brilliant,’ I muttered. I couldn’t find my usual overnight bag. Perhaps James had moved it. I opened the cupboard and poked around.

  ‘He is Cameron’s guest speaker,’ she was saying. ‘And whilst Higham’s aides are denying any rumours that he will try to make a leadership bid, some believe Cameron is keeping him firmly where he can see him.’

  ‘Huh,’ I muttered. ‘Blackpool. Slumming it, poor thing.’

  I spotted the black leather corner of my bag on the shelf above my winter coat; I tugged hard to free it. A big brown envelope of photos fell to the floor, the images scattering at my feet. I bent to pick them up. A town-house at night, a smart town-house, Georgian probably, with shiny white pillars and clipped topiary. People coming and going out of the front door; no one I recognised. I realised they were all men. Then an earlier photograph, dated the same November night last year as the others, but this one taken before midnight; a group of young women, high-heeled, long-haired, trench-coats belted tightly, a couple in fur coats, probably fake, pulled up around hard little faces, the lights from the streetlamps bleeding into the night.

  And then finally, someone I did know. Lord Higham, walking down the front stairs of the house, talking on a mobile phone, shirt unbuttoned, his jacket slung over one shoulder. Three o’clock in the morning.

  UNVERSITY, FRIDAY

  13 MARCH 1992

  O, thou bewitching fiend, ‘twas thy temptation,

  Hath robbed me of eternal happiness …

  What, weep’st thou? ‘Tis too late; despair. Farewell.

  Fools that will laugh on earth, must weep in hell.

  Doctor Faustus, Marlowe

  James was still close behind me as we stepped from the Randolph’s lift, my nose running from the cocaine. When Dalziel opened the penthouse door and took my hand to pull me inside, I could feel him trembling, his skin glossy with sweat, his hands clammy. Paler than I’d ever seen him, he was obviously wired, his teeth grinding, so high that he was almost rigid, though it was unclear exactly on what.

  ‘Nice pad,’ James said, peering into the suite. ‘What’ve you been up to then? Your dad’s downstairs, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dalziel snapped. ‘Celebrating his poxy wedding anniversary. A treat for all the family, I don’t think. For Christ’s sake,’ he’d spotted Lena now, who could barely stand, ‘I told her not to get too fucked, stupid tart.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ James stared at Dalziel, ‘maybe you should have told her that six months ago.’

  Dalziel turned his back on us and stalked into the suite. ‘Wait there,’ he muttered over his shoulder.

  I’d never seen Dalziel lose his cool properly before; the nearest he’d ever come was at the pub that night when Yasmin had railed at me. His sister Yasmin. I glanced down at my hand where he’d been grasping it. Something dark and sticky had marked my palm.

  The boy with the bullet head was waiting at the foot of the stairs. He looked petrified. ‘You heard him,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Wait there.’

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ James retorted. ‘What’s all the bloody secrecy about? Satanic rites?’

  ‘I thought this was meant to be fun,’ I agreed. The coke was such a brief buzz, and I was freezing and doubtful. I yearned for the numbing bliss of my opium.

  ‘Fun?’ Bullet-boy stared at me. ‘Did you? Did you really? It is not fun, it is our mission.’

  A handbell rang somewhere. I realised then, following James and a still-swaying Lena up the stairs of the penthouse, that I hadn’t thought much about it at all; I’d just thought about Dalziel and where my next hit was coming from. Only now I felt an increasing sense of dread.

  Music was playing – Handel’s Messiah, which I recognised from the cathedral: that Dalziel often played at home, a soprano singing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. The entire room was candlelit and the thick carpet had been slashed and pulled up. Strange chalk marks and circles were drawn on the floorboards below.

  ‘Christ,’ James laughed nervously, ‘this is going to cost someone a fucking fortune.’

  A huge ornate four-poster bed squatted at the back of the room, entirely curtained in thick red brocade. In front of it, someone had constructed a makeshift altar on which sat a bottle of golden liquid and a cup.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ James said, moving towards the bed, and poured himself a drink – but Lena was too fast for him. The bottle went flying and smashed on the floor. She had possession of the cup; she drank it down in one.

  ‘Greedy bitch,’ James muttered. For a moment, Brian looked furious. Then he shrugged. ‘She’ll be sorry,’ he murmured.

  The room was stifling and I recognised the smell of incense from the Latin Masses my grandmother had taken me to in France, and something else, something sweet – which I later realised was chloroform.

  And then a door opened behind us and we turned our heads to see Dalziel saunter into the room, chest bare and a pentangle painted on it, his hair greased back, his eyes painted black again. He smiled at us and it was a truly frightening smile, his teeth bared – and I saw it was because his soul was not present any more. He was empty and fearless with hatred and amphetamine.

  ‘Welcome to Pandemonium.’ He stalked to the bed and pulled the front curtain back. ‘Welcome to Hell.’

  There lay a sleeping child, hair dark as night on the snowy pillow, face pallid as marble.

  And in Dalziel’s shadow Bullet-boy walked, and he held before him a coiled rope.

  My stomach plunged.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on here?’ James demanded.

  Lena staggered where she stood. ‘Christ’s sake,’ she moaned. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Christ won’t help you now, my dear,’ Dalziel deadpanned, and he turned to face us. ‘It’s all Christ’s fault in the first place, you could say.’

  ‘He’s unconscious, isn’t he, that kid?’ James accused, staring at the motionless form. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Dalziel?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he sniggered and his eyes were wild and dark in the candlelight, two spots of colour high on his chiselled face. ‘Merely honouring my father and my mother.’

  I looked at him and for the first time I was utterly repulsed. ‘What do you mean?’ My voice was high-pitched with stress.

  ‘The final commandments, of course: Five and Six. “Honour your father and mother,” and of course, the key. The one you must have all been wondering about. You shall not murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ James and I said in unison.

  Lena bent over and threw up.

  ‘This is my half-brother, Charlie.’ Dalziel gazed down at the child and then pushed the dark hair back from the little boy’s face almost tenderly. ‘I don’t like him very much; I don’t think the world would be a worse place without him. My father probably won’t even notice, he’s got so many kids, and his mother – well, his mother is a whore.’ He looked up at us and I saw that he was mad now, that he obviously had lost all sense of reality, his eyes flicking round the room nervously, starting at shadows and daemons. ‘Just like his big sister Yasmin. My stepsister.’

  Or not mad, perhaps. Maddened. I thought of the failed attempt with the horse. I stared at my friend.

  ‘He’s my twenty-first birthday present to myself. But,’ he looked round at us again, his smile stretched taut, ‘as usual, I’m happy to share.’

  ‘Dalziel.’ I reached my hand out to him. ‘You’re joking, right? He’s only a little boy.’

  ‘And if he was a grown-up, that’d make it all right, would it?’ Dalziel giggled and my skin felt icy.

  ‘No, of course not.’ I was confused, the brandy and the sleepless nights and the stress snarling up my weary brain. ‘But you don’t want to hurt anyone, do you? Not really.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know that?’ he hissed. ‘How the fuck do you know anything about me, any of you? You’re all fucking stupid, the lot of you. God, you make me sick, you stupid, stupid fucking idiots.’

/>   And with a plunging feeling, a feeling of despair, I remembered what Yasmin had said in the pub that night. I realised that if you feel you have nothing to lose, you are genuinely lethal.

  ‘Well, I care.’ James was speaking very fast. ‘You’re not going to hurt anyone, not when I’m around.’

  ‘Oh, good, James,’ Dalziel smiled at him. ‘I thought you were too weak to act – but perhaps you’re not, after all. I thought I had chosen you for nothing, but perhaps I was wrong. I do hope so.’

  ‘What is this – some kind of warped challenge?’ James asked. ‘You’re fucking insane.’ Sweat was running down his face and he stepped nearer Dalziel until he was standing almost beside the bed. Lena was groaning on the floor and I looked at Brian and started to move forwards and then he threw Dalziel the rope and grabbed me, restrained me. I could feel Brian’s hands were shaking, really shaking, and I thought I could probably overcome him. And all the time I kept thinking how could I have been so stupid, how stupid, how stupid …

  ‘Perhaps I am.’ Dalziel stood now so he was face to face with James, and in his hand he held a knife. ‘You’ll have to decide now, won’t you, James? You’ll have to make your own decision for once in your life, without me leading you.’

  James put his hand inside his jacket and brought out the brown paper parcel that Dalziel had given him earlier, and in one fluid move unwrapped it. A stiletto knife in an ivory sheath. He stared down at it as if it were alive, as if it might rear up and stab him in the face. It was identical to the one Dalziel held.

  ‘Kill me or I’ll kill him.’ Dalziel smiled beatifically and I thought that I might be sick now myself. ‘It’s up to you.’

  Lena was crawling towards the door, crying and retching.

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Dalziel laughed a strange reedy laugh. ‘It’s locked, loves, it’s locked – and I threw away the key.’

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ Lena moaned. ‘I don’t feel well at all.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t be so greedy, should you, love?’ Dalziel taunted her, but his beatific smile was fading. He looked unsure suddenly, as if he might be coming round from whatever madness, whatever drug held him in its grip. He put an unsteady hand out, held on to the bedpost.

  ‘Dalziel, please,’ I implored. When he looked at me I saw there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, and I saw he was crying. ‘It’s an eye for an eye, my love, isn’t it?’ The tears ran down his face, tracking through the smeared pentangle. ‘My beautiful Rose. My morning star.’

  And then the child on the bed stirred and moaned in his sleep, and I struggled desperately for a moment and I felt Brian’s hands still shaking although his grip was like steel. I looked at James across the bed and we stared at each other for a second or perhaps it was an hour, it was too hard to tell, and adrenalin and fear took over. I sort of threw myself out of Brian’s grasp with the vague idea of bringing him down, only he was too quick, and he picked up something from the sideboard. I didn’t see exactly what but I thought it was a crystal vase, and he brought it down over my head – and for an instant the pain was excruciating. My eyes were swimming with water from the vase, or perhaps it was blood, and then I was falling down, down, down and I hit my head on the floorboards. I lay there on my side and I thought I heard someone screaming and—

  And then all was darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

  Before I left for my parents’, I locked the house up carefully, checking every window, every door. I’d just reached the junction for the motorway when my phone rang.

  ‘Rose,’ a desperate voice whispered, ‘Rose, I don’t have much time. I need to talk to you – now.’

  I knew it was madness going back, but everything that had forced me to seek out the truth in my work felt heightened; I was compelled to follow the story until the facts became completely clear. I squared it with myself: the children were safely out of the way; I was still a free agent for the next twenty-four hours and I was determined to do something right.

  My phone bleeped again. A text from Xav.

  ‘Call me: I’m in a meeting but I’ll come out. Do not go near Kattan again. We need to speak NOW.’

  I threw the phone back on the seat beside me and put my foot down.

  Rain clouds were travelling fast across the horizon, gathering darkness as they moved nearer. Verdi played on the car radio; something dramatic and tragic that I didn’t know. It suited my mood.

  The housekeeper answered the door.

  ‘I’ve come to see Maya.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘I’m sure she is. I just spoke to her.’

  ‘I think you’ll find—’

  Maya ran down the stairs. ‘It’s all right, Miss Ellis, she’s a friend.’ She suddenly looked dubious. ‘You are a friend, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  A doubtful Miss Ellis retreated reluctantly. Maya, it had to be said, looked slightly deranged: barefoot, in a white vest and jeans, her arms tattooed with unicorns on one side, a rainbow and what looked like a pentangle on the other. She presented a completely different picture from her previous glamour.

  ‘I don’t have much time,’ she said, dragging me into the house from the doorstep, peering over my shoulder anxiously. Her face was free of make-up for the first time, huge shadows beneath her limpid eyes, her hair wavy and mussed. The wind moaned through the great oaks behind us and I stepped inside, pulling my jacket tighter. None of the lights were on and the old house was dark and gloomy.

  ‘Look, I was worried about talking about Nadif yesterday.’ She led me into the vast drawing room, speaking quickly, frenetically even. ‘But I’m a virtual prisoner, and I want people to know the truth about my father before it is too late. He is a tyrant.’ She lit a cigarette with a gold lighter; there were scratches on her shaking hand. ‘He is a tyrant and a murderer. But you, Rose,’ she looked at me and her bloodshot eyes were blazing, ‘you can tell the world the truth.’

  I had found my old dictaphone in the glove box; Alicia used it sometimes for her singing. I pulled it out now, placed it on the coffee table between us. Maya eyed it suspiciously and then shrugged elegant shoulders. She seemed slightly glazed by her obvious misery.

  ‘Nadif had such ideals. No one understood. They didn’t understand.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My dad. His yobs. They just used him until he couldn’t say no. And then they tried to use him to get to me.’

  I was lost.

  ‘Maya, hang on. Can you slow down a sec?’

  ‘You know my father has been hoping to be awarded a peerage?’ She slumped on the sofa, ash dropping onto the floor. ‘It looks doubtful now, but he thinks there’s a chance he might have a seat in the House of Lords soon.’

  ‘Really?’ I was fascinated. I saw the headlines now: ‘Peer locks up his daughter.’ ‘Does he have British citizenship?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Dual citizenship.’

  ‘What’s his connection in the Lords?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. She seemed slightly hyper, her mind skittering from topic to topic. ‘That’s not important now. Rose, he has made me a prisoner here again to stop me speaking out.’

  ‘Again?’ I leaned forward. ‘Speaking out about what?’

  There was a knock on the door and we both jumped. It was the housekeeper.

  ‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’ she asked, her small pebble eyes scanning the room quickly. Maya waved her away impatiently. ‘Not now. Please, leave us.’ She ground out her cigarette in the ugly marble ashtray and then immediately lit another one. Her French manicure was chipped. ‘He did not like my boyfriend. Amongst other things, he was a black man, he was African. My father doesn’t believe in mixing cultures or religion.’

  ‘And what religion do you follow?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, does it?’ she laughed rather hysterically. ‘I follow my own god.’

  My he
art sank. I’d hoped I’d been wrong about some of my assumptions, about facing the facts that seemed obvious about Maya.

  ‘I saw you on that march in London,’ I said. ‘The pro-Islam one. With Nadif, weren’t you? There was a picture in the paper. Were those his ideals you mentioned?’

  She looked confused for a moment. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I remember now. He wanted to go. I was there to – it was—’

  There was another knock on the door and a rather stooped middle-aged man in a slightly threadbare suit entered the room. He was paper-thin, a shadow of a man.

  ‘Hello,’ he said politely. ‘Excuse me, but, Maya, I think you should come with me now.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she said rudely. ‘Go away.’

  ‘It’s time for your medicine.’ He smiled apologetically at me. ‘Do excuse me, Miss—’

  ‘You can’t make me take that poison.’

  I didn’t know what to do. I stood up, quickly pocketing the tiny tape recorder. ‘Please, Mr—’

  ‘Dr Fisher,’ he smiled again, stepping towards Maya. ‘Come on now, Maya. Be a good girl. Your father is so worried about you, you know that.’

  ‘Rose, please,’ she said, staring at me wildly. I was starting to feel like I was trapped in some sort of Victorian melodrama. I thought of Mrs Rochester locked in her husband’s attic. ‘Please help me.’

  ‘I really think –’ I said rather helplessly to the doctor – ‘I think you should do what Ms Kattan—’

  ‘And I think you should go now, don’t you, love?’ a voice interrupted. I spun round. The young man called Zack stared at me from the door. ‘In fact, you were just leaving, weren’t you?’

  I gaped at him stupidly whilst the doctor moved towards a now sobbing Maya, and then Zack took me firmly by the arm and marched me to the door, down the front steps and to my car.

  ‘Help me, Rose,’ I could hear her calling pathetically. ‘Please, help me.’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ I complained. ‘That girl needs help. Let me go.’

  ‘Do us all a favour, love. Get in the car and go now,’ he said. He smelled unpleasant, of stale sweat and something I couldn’t place. Something like ammonia. Something chemical.